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Jessy F.P's blog of updates, and entertainment-related tomfoolery.

Monthly Archives: October 2011

안녕하세요! That is Korean, for those of you whom do not know this. The reason I use that language, is because today I will be writing my personal review, on the game known as “Dragon Nest.” Dragon Nest, is made by Nexon. Nexon is a Korean-based company that makes tons of games, games of which most of you have probably played, such as Vindictus, Sudden Attack, and it’s most successful game, Maple Story. Nexon to me, is the plague itself. Nexon has a bad past, of one-sided PvP, abuse of micro-transactions, and over-the-top graphics to compensate for it’s shitty gameplay.

Today I will set my hate for Nexon behind me, for purposes of giving a proper review. What do I review a game on, you say? I base it on:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS – What I notice first, things that fall under this. Is installation, launching, any technical difficulties, and up until the tutorial is finished.

GAMEPLAY – Pretty straight forward, here. How the game plays out, things that fall under this, are controls, fighting, skills, and communicating with other players.

PvP – Stands for “Person vs. Person” my favorite, this means it is purely player characters, against other player characters, in a fight to the death.

BALANCE OF CLASSES – How the different classes differ, what most people play. And which is the most over powered.

PERSONAL ‘ICKS’, AND FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE GAME – The end of my rant, and what I found most aggravating about said game.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: After a few videos, on how the game looks. While waiting on the not-so hefty file to download, I seemed intrigued. After it did download, it was all easy. The installation is pretty straight forward, and everything just seems really sleek. Once the installation was completed, I was so hyped to get into the game. I clicked on the little shortcut it gave me, to start the game. It opened up a new tab, and brang me back to the Nexon page for Dragon Nest. After thinking to myself “Well, alright…” I click the big purple button that says “PLAY”, I do so. It prompts me to download it yet again.

After a half an hour, going through the FAQs, and forums. I decided to just take a method that I use for ALL Nexon games, go to the actual file, find the launcher, and launch it myself. I do so, and works fine. C’mon now, Nexon. I shouldn’t have to do this, put your launcher as a shortcut, on my desktop for me. Like normal games do.

In the game, the tutorial is pretty nice. It weaves in story, and learning, like any good school does. But this aint no private school, this is a game. I, personally, just want to get down to the nitty gritty, in your face-see? I do admit, the story wasn’t bad, the cutscenes at the end of each dungeon seemed pretty rewarding. Good call, Nexon. Good call.

GAMEPLAY: The gameplay is very generic, it uses the W,A,S,D, to get around. Space bar, to jump. 1,2,3,4,est, to use skills. But it also uses the mouse to normal attack, and special attack. I played as a Cleric, which is like a healer, but they only heal themselves. Like little ninjas, they are all up in your grill. Looking cool, taking names, chewing bubblegum, all the metaphorical shit.

Like that? Modeled after a certain albino cartoon-character.

The fighting can become VERY disorienting, you control the way your character fights with the mouse. While clicking like a banshee, and because your character is slow as a turd sliding down a iceberg in December during the ice-age, you become very fed up with PvP, very fast. On the plus side, the skills look nice!

PvE: I actually find that PvE, was the best quality of this game. Nexon always makes their monster fighting feel rewarding, even if you get scraps of nothing from destroying a whole army of goblins. They have a real neat feature to PvE, it’s call “ACTUALLY LETTING ME PICK THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF ASS, I’D LIKE TO KICK.” They have easy mode, right up the Abyss mode. So say that play you used to grind at when you were Lv. 4? On abyss, it’ll make you cry. Blood. From another person.

PvP: Needless to say, I have a LOT to talk about, here. So if you hate hearing people complain about balance, skip this review after these words. You can only go into PvP, after Lv. 10, which is good! Because if you weren’t, you’d probably set your computer on fire, while chanting “THE POWER OF CHRIST ISN’T HELPING!”, over, and over. ‘Cos it’s THAT hard, well. That hard if you go into anything bigger than 2v2. I found that small games, such as 2v2, and 1v1, were very enjoyable! It let me have some space, enjoy the fight, and give me a chance against the other, higher level person. It actually felt balanced, that I could kill a max level, and only be Lv. 10, it made me feel good.

But anything higher than that…. They have matches that are 8v8, which if you cannot do simple math. Is sixteen people, SIXTEEN people going at each other with fire in their eyes. It’s scary when you think about it, because they either have the ability to turn air, into fire, or the power to drag giant crosses from the sky, and just plain ol’ ruin your day. I found myself in a few of these games, and often found myself being juggled by two or so Swordsmen classes. Yes, yes you read that correct. I was JUGGLED. Once they had me in the air, I could not get out of the air, I could not get back up, I could not use any skills. I was the epitome of a volleyball, it was sad, and very infuriating.

With them looking like something out of a “Kingdom Hearts” cosplay, doesn’t make me feel any better.

BALANCE OF CLASSES: Cleric is pretty damn good at PvE, and the most fun for PvE. For low level PvP, it’s near GOD-LIKE. Anything after that, forgot about it, might as well chop that little wang off, and feed it to the Acrobat-class. There are two other classes you can become, after your character reaches Lv. 15, I sadly, have not been able to reach that level. But from my experience, it really doesn’t change you in any way. It just gives you more useless skills, and makes you stronger than any character that isn’t Lv. 15 or above.

I found Swordsmen-classes were the bomb diggity in PvP, although I haven’t place as one. They run the fastest, have higher priority over most skills, can juggle you to the point of having the person being juggled to rip out their eyes, and call themselves Davy Jones. Mage-classes can blink around, very WoW-like. Makes slow classes rage, but other than that, they’re just meatbags that dance around. Archers/Acrobats are very fast, and one of the biggest piss-offs of the game! They mystify you with their ways of getting the hell out of your face, just to troll you by dealing heavy damage from afar.

The balance is broken, much like the force. And I plea to Nexon, fix your games, stop dicking around with such things.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Overall, up until I started to play high-number PvP, it was absolutely fun. The story isn’t the best, didn’t hold me like most games do. The graphics weren’t the best, the PvE is perfect, don’t change that. The game is quite new, and is farmed/spammed with gold-sellers, they aren’t dealt with, it’s like they don’t even care about the game.

The game needs a lot of work, I personally, think they should worry less about how much money they make off the game. And worry more on how good is the game ITSELF. And work on what they have, instead of just adding more crap. Nexon has a bad history of doing this, and I hope they snap out of their little dream world. Some of their games could do VERY well, like Maple Story, if they just cut the crap.

If you liked this review, and have a free-to-play game that you’d like to be reviewed. E-mail me, at PulsivePanda@live.ca

Like this:

– One of my kitty’s tail broke, so thus, is now dead. And it is highly encouraged that it is to be cut off, or else it could die.

– Look in at comic strip below.

(Click for fullsize)

So you heard it here, folks. Pulse, my assistant will be answering your questions. Every Friday! And that can be ANY question, ALL questions. Anything from say, the meaning of life, to where your pen went. All will be answered, through the limited knowledge of my Angel Droppling friend (She is just a bit mis-guided, don’t be mean to her.). I put her in charge because I know, while I’m gone treating my goat feet. That she will do a great job! She gets my pencils when they fall, I’m SURE she can do this right.

So if you have a question that needs answering, the email is Ask_Pulse@hotmail.com and don’t worry. She knows how to use a computer (Just don’t look at her “My pictures” folder, some very, very wrong things in there. Ugghhh…)